Better Living through Beliefs: Exploring the Association between Values and Health

• In Event: 2184 - Section on Medical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 19. Contextual Factors and Health

Abstract

Cultural sociologists have argued that cultural values motivate people’s behaviors across a range of contexts through automatic cognitive processes, but it is not clear in what areas the consequences of holding different worldviews manifest. Because health reflects the accumulation of often unconscious decisions and behaviors over time, I argue that health is one area where holding different values should lead to observable differences across individuals. In this paper, I use path models to show that across 20 European countries, cultural values are predictive of a range of health problems and health-related behaviors and that different value dimensions are related to different kinds of health and behavior. Values are consistently associated with general measures of health, but their relationship to specific health outcomes is inconsistent. I also show that for certain forms of health, this relationship between values and health is partially mediated by health-related behaviors such as diet and alcohol consumption, socializing, and physical activity, providing evidence for a model in which values influence health by shaping day-to-day behaviors. While these results are not causal, they indicate a potential pathway linking cultural worldviews to health and highlight one area where values might be consequential for social inequality.

Author

• Kevin Robert Kiley, Duke University